Faculty Forums 2012

Fall 2012 Forums

Determining Sample Size When Planning a Quantitative Study

“How many subjects do I need for my study”? This is one of the most important (and frequently asked) questions a quantitative researcher needs to answer before conducting a study. A study with too few subjects (or participants) may fail to produce useful findings, whereas a study with too many subjects can waste time and resources.

If you conduct quantitative research or plan to do so in the future and want to learn more about how to make informed sample size decisions, please plan to attend this “lunch and learn” session.

Participants attending this session will learn:

The role of effect size, alpha level, and statistical power in identifying the appropriate sample size
Why the choice of statistical procedures can affect sample size requirements
How to estimate target sample size for hypothetical scenarios through a practice exercise

Use and Interpretation of Effect Size in Quantitative Research

Journals in numerous fields including psychology, education, public health, and business currently require that effect size estimates be included along with p-values when reporting statistical results. Yet, the concept of effect size remains a mystery to many researchers.

If you are among those who have lost countless hours of sleep pondering the notion of effect size, or if you simply wish to gain a better understanding of what effect sizes are and how they can aid in interpreting your statistical findings, please attend this “lunch and learn” session.

During the session participants will learn:

The meaning of effect size and why effect size is useful
Different types of effect size estimates and when to use them
How to interpret effect size in conjunction with p-values, or,
What effect size tells you that p-values don’t

Write Away: Polish and Submit your Manuscript

Have a manuscript nearly ready to go? Struggling to "revise and resubmit" a paper? Need a little extra push to get those papers of yours out there? Hoping for social support from colleagues? Then there's an option!

CETL, in conjunction with UNC's Office of Research, is proud to announce a series of luncheon workshops specially designed to bring your academic, creative, and professional writing to fruition.

The workshops will be co-facilitated by Laura Pritchett and Joyce Weil. Dr. Pritchett is a distinguished authour and faculty of English at UNC. Dr. Joyce Weil is an esteemed Assistant Professor of Gerontology and has her first book contract with a university press. Participants at these workshops will explore best practices and engage in peer review with the goal of completing a manuscript for submission.

Faculty are asked to commit to 1.) attend three sessions during the spring semester 2013, 2.) to have identified a manuscript in progress (1500 - 6000 words depending on final product) to work on, and 3.) be prepared to read and provide feedback on one or two products of similar length from colleagues.

These workshops are limited to UNC faculty and staff. If interested please attend our informational luncheon meeting on November 28th, 11:00am.

All the Classroom's a Stage: Techniques for Perfecting Your Performance

Interested in perfecting your classroom performance? By using a technique
called interactive theatre, workshop participants will engage in a staged
instruction session riddled with problems. Attendees will have unique
opportunities to stop the action, rewind the scene, and actively alter the plot
while putting their own teaching techniques to the test. The staged classroom
experience will facilitate dialogue about missteps in the classroom and
generate reflection upon one’s own teaching. We all want to receive standing
ovations for our performances; this workshop will help you get there!

Participants will be presented with common pedagogical diffculties in
order to assess possible resolutions. Participants will test various teaching techniques in order to facilitate an improved instruction session and will experience an innovative method of initiating evaluative dialogue in order to stimulate pedagogical improvement.

Making the Grade: An Interactive Panel on Proven Grading Practices and Effective Techniques

Ready for grading? Want to minimize the amount of time you spend grading? Looking for tips about general grading practices happening on campus? Grading functions to motivate, credential, and assess student learning in formative and summative ways. But how we grade makes a difference. This interactive faculty panel, presented by the CETL Teaching and Learning Fellows, will share innovative and tested approaches for grading student work that will be of practical use as you grade current students and fine-tune your syllabi for next term.

Participants at this session will:
1. Learn time saving tips for providing feedback to students

2. Learn how to gather student feedback from large lecture classes to improve grading

3. Appreciate how to calibrate grades and grade students working on large projects

I'll Show you Mine if You Show Me Yours! A Collegial Look at Final Exams

Many of us strive to write final exams that provide our students with meaningful learning opportunities and ourselves with information we need to assess student learning and assign final grades. But some of us have more experience than others! And we probably use a variety of strategies for writing questions and deciding what our exam format should be. Our students often have no idea how much time and energy faculty put into these decisions, but we all do. So let's get together for lunch and see if we can provide some mutual support.

Please bring your curiosity and a copy of an exam you're really satisfied with or an exam you'd like to improve. There's no agenda here: just a hope that we can learn something together!

The Flipped Classroom - Using Teacher Created Online Video to Increase Student Engagement

Jerry is a pioneer in the ipped learning method and the creator and
facilitator for the Flipped Class Network - a 9000 member online professional learning network for teachers using screencasting and the ipped teaching
model. He is currently using the ipped learning model on 5 sections of
College Algebra at UNC.

Instructors will learn the history, philosophy and pedagogy of the flipped classroom model. They will also see different methods of how they can incorporate the flipped model into their instruction. Participants will learn how to create sample videos and post them online.

Formative Peer Observation:
Dialogue and action toward the enhancement of teaching and learning.

SoTL welcomes returning and new participants to join us for a faculty forum session that explores Peer Observation as a proven method for improving and developing teaching and learning, and for gaining new ideas and perspectives that can lead to scholarly reflection and research.

Peer observation engages faculty in the observation of their colleagues and instructor’s performance through classroom interactions and when conducted appropriately yields mutual benefits for all involved. This session will review research on peer observation at the college level and examine protocols used at other institutions to support peer observations. We will also explore potential for piloting a similar approach amongst those interested at UNC.

This meeting, which will be co-facilitated by Teaching and Learning Fellow, Dr. Robert Reinsvold and Assoc. Director for Faculty Development, Dr. Deborah Romero.

Community-Engaged Scholoarship: From the Margins to the Mainstream

UNC has deep roots in Greeley and many faculty and their students are involved
in community-based research, scholarship, and creative works. However, often this is not viewed as
central to faculty roles. This session will present the national landscape of the community
engagement movement; reveal how engagement is central to higher education achieving its important
goals to produce knowledge that benefits society and prepares students for active citizenship;
define today’s engagement as a form of scholarship and an aspect of learning and discovery; and
describe how community engaged scholarship can be
embedded in productive research and teaching, as well as service.

Cracks in the Ivory Tower:
Why
Engagement
is
the
Key
to
Higher Education's
Future

Critics, external and internal, to higher education are calling for a shift from an historic
internally‐focused, discipline‐based framework to one that is globally‐networked,
externally‐engaged, and inter ‐ and even transdisciplinary as a means of remaining accessible,
affordable, and relevant in solving socially significant problems. This session will feature the
challenges and opportunities inherent in today’s landscape of public higher education; speak
specifically to new and advance sources of knowledge and knowledge creation, present the case of
the centrality of engagement to higher education accomplishing its important goals of producing
knowledge that benefits society and preparing students for productive citizenship in a democratic
society; and define today’s engagement as a form of interdisciplinary work and scholarship and an
aspect of learning
and discovery for faculty and students.

Framing the Way: An Educator's Guide to Philosophical Ethics, with Practical Implications for Instruction and Course Design

Have you ever struggled to articulate the ethical values or principles that inform your courses and discipline? Or been surprised when someone questioned your classroom practices for reasons that may not strike you as having to do with ethics at all? Would you like to find ways to help students think more critically and constructively when ethical issues arise during class discussion? Or to design learning activities that facilitate genuine deliberation about ethical issues rather than simple assertions of personal points of view?

This workshop will briefly introduce you to three conceptual frameworks that at least implicitly structure most people's ethical thinking. But the main aim is to demonstrate how explicit attention to these frameworks can help you more accurately identify your own and others' ethical commitments and more effectively deliberate about how to resolve potential conflicts among them.

Special invitation for Pre-Service Teachers and Professionals!

Participants at this session will learn about how and why one local school district is promoting research informed English language learning while also supporting first language development. Participants will learn about:

Open access scholarly works are online, free to the reader and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. For open access to reach its full potential, it is not enough for others simply to read openly accessible scholarly works. It’s also important for others to build on that research. Creative Commons licenses allow creators to communicate which rights they keep and which rights they waive to support sharing and use by others. Come learn from Greg Grossmeier of Creative Commons how CC is empowering the future of open access.

Abstract:Inquiry-based learning (IBL) has been argued to help students develop critical thought processes. However, developing such learning environments and curriculum materials are not easy tasks. In our discussion we will share key elements that we have found useful when creating IBL environments, which could be applicable in other college level courses. We hope participants contribute to discussion with their IBL experiences or questions.

“From Study Hall to City Hall” – Special G.Town Bus Tour of Greeley for UNC Faculty & Staff
Hop on board for a special ride about town and learn all about what Greeley has to offer you and your students - City of Greeley staff will point out the special places that you will want to learn more about!

EXTRAS: Arrive at the Sod Buster Inn at 3:00 p.m. and you’ll be treated to tea and an Inn tour; the buses will depart at 3:30 p.m. for the city tour and return you Downtown in time to enjoy the live music and Go-Cup Friday Fest…a great way to top off the week! The Downtown Development Authority is providing special discount coupons to the tour group to make your visit that much more enjoyable!

RSVP: The City will need advance notice of how many passengers to expect. When you sign up you are free to also include a guest as well. RSVPs are needed to deborah.romero@unco.edu, by noon, September 21st. Late reservations will be accommodated on a space available basis.

Why Grin and Bear it when you can have lunch on us and learn about....The Greatest Bear Stories of Colorado!

September 19, 2012
Candelaria 1375
11:30 am

Laura Pritchett, PhD, English faculty and author of the new book Great Bear Stories of Colorado, will offer a slideshow and talk about the bears of our state; including the grizzlies that once roamed here,and the black bears that still do. Some stories are historical - Roosevelt's hunting, Pike's exploring, and the death of Colorado's last grizzly.

This two-part workshop is designed to lay the foundation for designing informative quantitative research. Participants are encouraged to bring their research ideas and research questions for review and feedback.

In Part 1 we discuss the primary purposes for conducting quantitative research and strategies for formulating meaningful research questions in order to get the most out of your data.

CETL offers instructional and technological support and can bring to fruition teaching and learning projects or professional workshops. Maybe you have a great instructional activity or teaching resource that has worked well with students? If so, we would like to hear about it!

CETL, in conjunction with the AVP for Research and the Office of Sponsored Programs, is proud to announce a series of luncheon workshops specially designed to support the scholarship of writing.

Working with Dr. Kay Ferrell, Professor of Special Education at UNC, a widely published researcher and successful grant writer who has collaboratively raised over 16.9 million dollars in external funding, participants at these workshops will explore practical ways to strengthen their own writing and scholarship. For more details, download Write Away.pdf

This presentation is designed as a working session where participants will actively engage in discussion regarding how best to update and enhance their (quantitative/qualitative)
research methods skills.

A brief overview of the current trends and issues in research methods will be followed by small group discussion and input.

This session will be a kick-off and initial needs assessment for future research methods professional development activities offered at UNC.

UNC’s Education Innovation Institute is working with the University of Colorado and the Department of Higher Education to help establish a database in which educator preparation programs can be validly linked to the K-12 educators they send out into the field.

The Office of Assessment and the Center for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning will sponsor a workshop on Using Microsoft SharePoint for Program Assessment presented by Jay Lightfoot from Computer Information Systems.

This session will introduce the basic use of Microsoft SharePoint as a tool to manage data for program review and assessment.

Come and celebrate student achievement and faculty excellence using best teaching and learning
practices.

Join us for the free luncheon and listen to Dr. Doug Woody, Professor of Psychological Sciences, accomplished academic and published scholar speak about E-books and Academic Performance, a must see event!

Are you eager to improve your writing? Needing to hit the mark with peer reviewers? Wishing to persuade a prospective funding agency? Wanting to hear how an experienced colleague at UNC has successfully written
grants? Interested in receiving collegial support and feedback from your peers? Struggling to find time? Then we have a solution!

This session, given by the Instructional Design and Development team in Continuing Education and Academic Outreach, will provide a basic introduction to online learning including terminology and tools available to convert your face to face courses to online. The session will also provide important information about how to get an online course scheduled, plan an online course, and get trained as an online instructor.

The Assessment Fair provides a forum for sharing and learning from the work of colleagues across the campus about assessment research and best practices that support student learning and educational outcomes.

As distance education becomes more relevant and available instructors are attempting to make their courses more interesting, accessible and interactive. During this session we will review a variety of free and low-cost programs and
formats instructors can use to engage students more effectively in the learning process and provide timely feedback on assignments, in distance and face-to-face learning situations.

Working with Dr. Kay Ferrell, Professor of Special Education at UNC, a widely published researcher and successful grant writer who has collaboratively raised over 16.9 million dollars in external funding, participants at these workshops will explore practical ways to strengthen their own writing and scholarship. For more details, download Write Away.pdf

In this Faculty Lunch Forum, we will discuss strategies for implementing more opportunities for academic writing in courses across the university. In particular, we will talk about how to incorporate short writing exercises that can help to generate class discussion, to encourage exploration and/or retention of ideas, and to enable students’ self-sufficiency.

Presented by: Dr. Sarah AllenDirector of Composition
Assistant Professor of Rhetoric and Composition
Department of English Language and Literature

CETL offers instructional and technological support and can bring to fruition teaching and learning projects or professional workshops. Maybe you have a great instructional activity or teaching resource that has worked well with students? If so, we would like to hear about it!